Interviews
Prepare students to explain their work, use the portfolio, and answer follow-up questions.
Practise talking about your team's work and answering questions. Know where to find the matching page so you can show a design, test, or result without searching the whole document.
Initial interview
Teams receive equal initial-interview time of at least ten minutes. You can use the first five minutes for an uninterrupted prepared presentation, followed by discussion with the . Check your event's arrangements before planning the timing.
Choose examples from the , member learning, and . Let students explain work they know, and practise handing over between speakers. A short introduction, a design problem, a team-development example, and an outreach result can give you a starting structure.
Spend more time where your team has more to explain, and leave time for questions.
Answering questions
Answer the question first, then give an example. If a judge asks why you changed the , start with the problem and the choice you made. You can describe earlier if they help explain that choice.
Be clear about what you measured, what you estimated, and what you still need to test. If another member knows a detail better, let them answer.
In the 2026–27 format, questions begin with one from Machine, Creativity, and Innovation and one from Team Attributes, chosen by the Judge Advisor. Use the question bank to practise, and be ready for follow-up questions about your own work.
Practise with portfolio examples
Use these book pages as reading exercises, then ask the same kinds of questions about your own pages. These prompts are rehearsal suggestions, rather than accounts of those teams' interviews.
| Page to study | Question the page can help you discuss | Follow-up for your own team |
|---|---|---|
| Blu Cru's driver controls, DECODE page 15 | How does the driver move through an automatic and recover from a problem? | Which cancellation or recovery paths did you test, and what did the robot do? |
| Super 7's outreach projects, DECODE page 6 | What is the purpose of one project, and what work does the team describe? | Which part did your students do, what did the partner do, and what happened afterward? |
| Seattle Solvers' member learning, DECODE page 3 | How does practice lead to independent work and responsibility? | What can a member do now, and which work shows that progress? |
Point to the relevant diagram, result, or example as you answer. If a follow-up needs information outside the page, use your working records to prepare an accurate answer. An unknown result should remain unknown until you collect it.
Build a short explanation
Practise explaining one topic in this order:
- Name the problem or goal in a sentence.
- Point to the observation that shaped your decision.
- Explain the team's action and the student's contribution.
- Give the measured or observed result, then the lesson or next step.
For a control feature, the portfolio diagram can support the action explanation and a test plot can support the result. For an outreach project, the activity record and follow-up serve those jobs. Use the records you have; you do not need a numerical result for every meaningful lesson.
Rehearsal
Ask a teammate or to choose questions without telling the presenters in advance:
- Why did you change this design?
- What did a new member learn to do independently?
- What happened after this outreach activity?
- What does the robot do when this fails?
- Who will take over when the current leaders leave?
Afterward, fix terms that confused the listener, claims you could not explain, and pages that were hard to find. Practise again with different questions.
Give a listener the submitted draft and ask them to note which page supported each answer. Rehearse with someone other than the page's author so that unclear terms and missing context become visible. Rotate who answers, and practise handing a technical detail to the member who knows it without restarting the whole explanation.
Pit conversations
Keep your portfolio, useful prototypes, drawings, and test records easy to find. A failed part can help explain why you changed a .
Answer the question asked and offer a demonstration when it helps. Judges can look at extra material in the , but they do not take it back for deliberation. Keep the main explanation in the submitted portfolio.
Have demonstrations ready to run. You should also be able to explain the work if the robot cannot demonstrate it at that moment.
Feedback
Read the feedback beside the PDF you submitted and discuss what happened in the interview. The feedback form records the panel's initial impression; it does not explain the full deliberation or every award decision.
Use it to find explanations and answers to improve. One event's result cannot tell you which layout every judge will prefer.